Touching...in a sad way

[Scadsobees]

Here at work we have a beautiful building with lots of big windows overlooking a forested gully.

We get a few bird bombs trying to break the windows, and we got one this morning...
Bam!  We checked, and sure enough a grey bird laying there twitching.   A little investigation and I found that it is a black-billed cuckoo.

A little later, I noticed a similar, smaller, not quite as pretty bird hanging around nearby.

I checked the little kamikazee bird, and he was quite stiff.  So I chucked him into the weeds so he can be absorbed naturally instead of drying out on the deck.

Now, Mrs. Cuckoo is stopping by occasionally, perching on a nearby railing for a few minutes before flying off.  Sad little bird.

Either that or she's stopping by to make sure that he's finished off  .  But I prefer to think that she misses her hubby.

[dragonfly]

She misses him. Animals may not be able to rationalize loss, but they form bonds and they mourn their losses.
It is sad. Thanks for posting the story.

[asprince]

I don't know all I understand or understand all I know about what I am about to comment on but.....some animals mate for life and some mate mate only for reproduction.


Steve

[Natalie]

We had a pair of turkeys that would show up pretty often and walk around the street, we live on a very busy street and they usually showed up in the early part of the morning and hold up traffic as they crossed the street.
I always enjoyed seeing them together.
One morning a kid driving to school hit the male as he crossed the street, not sure why it happened if it was avoidable or not but I went out there and the female was distraught.
The male made it to the sidewalk and died and the female would not leave him, she was pacing around, it was really very sad to see.
She never left until the local animal control officer came to remove the male.
Last November a couple of days before Thanksgiving she showed up on my front lawn with 11 offspring. I keep chickens so I don't know if they were aware of the food there or not but I brought out some grain for them and they all ate, I took pictures and then they flew off.
I had no idea how fast and high they could fly. They were flying up to the roof of the house like nothing, and they were surprisingly graceful.